


UNFORTUNATE WORDING

by Cat_Paw



Category: DCU (Comics), Green Lantern - All Media Types, The Flash - All Media Types
Genre: Alternate Universe - Soulmates, Barry Allen/Manuel Lago (side pairing), Biphobia, Bisexual Barry Allen, Internalized Homophobia, M/M, Not Beta Read, as always
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2019-08-20
Updated: 2019-08-20
Packaged: 2020-09-19 15:00:21
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 3,640
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/20329933
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/Cat_Paw/pseuds/Cat_Paw
Summary: In a world were the first words your soulmate said to you were imprinted on your arm in their handwriting on your 12th birthday, you would think that finding The One would be quite easy. It's just Barry's luck that his soulmate has the worst handwriting in existence.





	UNFORTUNATE WORDING

**Author's Note:**

  * For [Chimchiri](https://archiveofourown.org/users/Chimchiri/gifts).

> I originally wanted to post this during the HalBarry week for the second day 'Soulmate AU' but I didn't finish it in time.  
But because it is chimchiri's birthday, I finally found the motivation to finish it.  
So yeah, chim, this is for you. Happy birthday! ( ﾉ^ω^)ﾉﾟ

In a world were the first words your soulmate said to you were imprinted on your arm in their handwriting on your 12th birthday, you would think that finding The One would be quite easy. You just had to wait for the right words to pop up when you met somebody new and wait for them to react to your words, too. Sure, there were some people who got saddled with the bad luck of having really generic first greetings like 'hello' or 'nice to meet you' tattooed onto their skin while others hit the jackpot with getting the name of their soulmate. Though, the latter did get frowned upon a lot; mostly to keep impatient young people from throwing their names around everywhere. But yeah, it was mostly a pretty easy concept fate had cooked up for everyone. If you could read their words, that is. Which Barry could not. The handwriting on his forearm was like a doctor's note: a straight line with a little wave in the middle that apparently contained an entire sentence. To put it mildly: Barry was fucked.  
Not knowing what to listen for, he put a deeper meaning into all first words he heard and not just once did he face plant during an attempt to ask a girl out that had acted a bit nicer to him when they had talked. That Barry was a socially-awkward ball of anxiety during his teenage years did not help matters at all. But slowly the girls from his class started avoiding him or even outright telling him, they couldn't work together with him on group projects.  
Beth, fair-haired and eyes like flowers, took pity on him and pulled him aside after an especially embarrassing incident, and told him that while Barry was a very sweet and polite guy, the girls felt uncomfortable around him because he seemed so _desperat_e to get with one of them. Not having realized how his actions had looked to the others (because a. he was a teenager and b. as mentioned before he was not the best when it came to social interactions), he vowed to himself to better his behavior and his female classmates started relaxing around him again.  
While it wasn't outlawed to show someone your words, it was quite frowned upon and a very intimate affair, so when Barry show his now friend Beth the scribbling on his forearm, she carefully cradled his pale arm in her even paler hands and just studied it for about a minute. Barry got more nervous by the second so when Beth tenderly put her fingertips on the beginning of the sentence and pulled them along the tattoo's path, he jumped a bit. He absolutely hadn't expected that, goosebumps already appearing on his naked skin and Barry had to fight down the urge to rip his arm away from her touch. He already knew the skin around the tattoo was much more sensitive than the rest of his arm from long nights just lying on his bed and tracing the first words of his soulmate over and over again with bated breath. The person he would fall in love with and spent the rest of his life with - if he ever found her. After all he had no idea what to look out for. He may not be able to read the words it held as it's secret but just looking at it made Barry feel better. Less lonely. Less misplaced in the world. He had to grow up without his parents so was it that unexpected that he was yearning for a place to belong? For a person to belong with?  
Beth let go of his arm and held her own to her chest.  
"It's really hard to read."  
"Impossible, you mean." He replied.  
"I wouldn't say impossible, Barry." She put a hand on his upper arm and squeezed to show her sympathy. "You will find them, I'm sure."  
Why couldn't it just have been Beth? She was pretty and smart and nice with her hair that looked like it actually belonged on a princess from a fairy tale and eyes that always reminded Barry of the blue flowers growing in his aunt's garden.  
But no, it couldn't be that easy. Barry had to get the soulmate with the worst handwriting in existence instead. Just his luck.

Barry had always thought his soulmate would definitely be a girl but after an eventful evening at a party with his new friend Manuel, Barry had to rethink his views on that assumption quite a bit. The two of them never talked about it again but Barry's view on how the world worked had already shifted enough to put him in a bit of a personal crisis. He hadn't really wanted to talk about it but after Beth had figuratively pulled him by the ear until he told her about what had happened, he found himself nervously walk up and down the room while spilling his heart to her over the phone.  
"I-I just always...I never thought I would like..._guys_! I mean it was one time, so maybe it'll stay the one time? It's totally normal to experiment, right? I'm in college. You experiment in college...right?"  
"Barry!" Beth had been trying to get his attention for the last two minutes while Barry had just rambled on and on. "Do me a favor and take a deep breath."  
Almost reflexively he actually did. What the hell?  
"And another one."  
He did.  
"Better?"  
Barry started nodding before he remembered that Beth couldn't see him right now.  
"Yeah." He croaked. Hastily he cleared his throat and grabbed the phone a bit tighter.  
"It's just-" He hesitated, trying to bring order to the thoughts tumbling through his brain. "I didn't expect this to happen."  
He dramatically flopped back onto his bed, his legs mostly hanging over it, the way young heroines in romcoms did whenever they were about to give up halfway into the movie, complaining about their crush's unattainability. Except that this wasn't a crush. It was mere curiosity. At most.  
"So what do you want to do about Manuel?"  
Barry could hear Beth typing something on her computer in the background. Was he keeping her from working on a term paper?  
Trying not to feel bad about that Barry replied.  
"Do about Manuel? I'm not going to do anything. There's nothing_ to_ do. We're friends. That's it."  
A feminine chuckle.  
"Yeah, friends that hooked up during a party."  
Barry groaned, his free hand slapping lightly in his face, upper lip curled into an annoyed expression. He really didn't want to keep thinking about it.  
"Okay, Bar. What's the real problem here?" He couldn't hear her typing anymore. "I always thought you were okay with gay people?"  
He shifted a bit up on the bed until the back of his knees came against the mattress. Because that was the big question, right? Barry had never had a problem with homosexual people before. You couldn't control who you fell in love with and were attracted to. He knew that. So why was it so difficult for him to wrap his mind around the possibility that he might like not just girls? That there was a possibility that the person he would spend the rest of his life with was maybe a man?  
"I'm not gay."  
A short pause from Beth.  
"I never said that."  
Whenever he'd thought about his future, he always envisioned himself with a wife and kids and the stereotypical white picket fence. He'd spent most years of his childhood already feeling different from the rest of the kids his age and being more of an outcast who had trouble finding friends. He didn't want to have to deal with that again. That was normal, right? Barry had been born in a small farm town called Fallville in the middle of Iowa and while people acted nice around each other, he had been witness to more than one discussion about 'The Gays' and the words used to describe them. After his mother's death, Barry had to move to Central City to live with a police detective called Darryl Frye (Barry had later found out that Darryl and his mother had had an affair but that was a matter for another totally different identity crisis Barry figured) but the big city didn't seem to keep the hateful words away. In high school, the word 'gay' turned into a synonym for everything bad a teenager could think off. Some other boys took to throwing that term at his head every chance they got.  
Wrong hair cut. _Homo._ Too quiet. _Fairy._ Not liking sports. _Faggot._ Being Barry Allen._ Gay._  
Over the years, that word had turned into everything Barry was trying his hardest to not be. But it hadn't seemed to matter because now, his bullies were right.  
"This is really new for me." Barry admitted quietly.  
But that wasn't true either. Because now that he thought about it, he'd had thoughts along these lines before. He remembered being extremely fond of his first - and only - friend in grade school, crying for days when Dave suddenly had to move away, yearning for him for years whenever he felt lonely in a way he had always thought was normal, was what everyone felt for their friends, even if the intensity of it threatened to choke him at times. The glances he would give good-looking older boys and men, little peaks from the corner of his eyes as if already ashamed of his actions while still reassuring himself that he wasn't looking_ that way_ at them. Straight guys could aesthetically appreciate a handsome guy, right? And he liked girls! Barry definitely liked girls.  
"The world isn't just black and white, Bar." Beth's soothing voice a much needed beacon in the harsh waters of the sudden discovery about his entire self-image. His mind felt more like someone had pulled the plug in a bathtub that had been close to spilling over and now his thoughts were trapped in the little water vortex right on top of the drain.  
But was the realization about his own sexuality really so sudden? Barry had always wondered how some homosexual people spent years and entire decades telling themselves they weren't gay (wasn't it obvious who you were attracted to?) and now he had to face the fact that he'd done the very same thing for most of his life.  
"You don't have to chose, you know? There's this thing called bisexuality. You can like guys _and_ girls."  
Barry had heard about bisexuality before but just like being gay it didn't have the best reputation where he came from. In a small farm town in Iowa it had meant that you were gay anyway, were just leading good christian girls on and that your soul was going to hell with an express ticket. In a high school in Central City it had meant that you were greedy, that you were unfaithful by nature, 'a hole is a hole' and all that.  
But in college Barry had met a lot of people from a lot of different places, a lot of different skin colors and cultures, a lot of different sexualities. And wasn't that how the whole thing with Manual had happened in the first place? How Manual had entrusted Barry with the knowledge that Manual was bisexual himself? How he thought Barry was cute? How he wondered whether Barry liked him back because Manual had noticed how Barry looked at him?  
"I have pamphlets."  
Barrys pondering came to a sudden halt.  
"You have what?" He asked.  
"I have pamphlets. About bisexuality. Jenny from the gay-straight alliance gave them to me. She also gave me this really cute rainbow pin that I'm definitely going to use."  
It took a moment for Barry's brain to process this information.  
"Why did she give you pamphlets about bisexuality?"  
For a moment, he wondered if Beth had had a sudden realization about her sexuality as well.  
"Well, obviously for you, dummie."  
His first instinct was to ask her why the hell she was talking to other people about his private problems, when another thought occurred to him.  
"You knew?"  
He could hear Beth just breathing for a few seconds before she spoke up again.  
"I didn't know for sure but yeah, I've had my suspicions. We've been friends for a long time now, Barry. How could I not notice?"  
Their conversation continued on for another hour and in the end, Barry had to swear to Beth to at least ask Manuel out on a date.  
His relationship with Manual lasted for almost 10 months and while Barry wasn't 100 percent perfect with his sexuality at the end of it, he'd become much more relaxed and open-minded about his attraction to men.  
Manuel hadn't been his soulmate either but Barry had really stopped his desperate search a long time ago. Either it was going to happen and Barry would hopefully end up happy or he would find happiness with someone else in his own way. His relationship with Manuel was followed by a few girlfriends before The Accident turned him into a superhero almost overnight and he didn't really have time for dating anymore. Much less a soulmate.

Back when Barry had been a child, he'd often thought about how he was going to meet his soul mate. It would be on a busy morning, both of them pushing through a crowd of people to get to work, his soulmate getting bumped into and accidentally running into Barry's chest, their eyes would meet, they would whisper each others words and just _know_. Or they would meet in a quiet bookstore, both of them reaching for the same book, hands touching, Barry stuttering an apology and that would be _it_. His childhood fantasies had been full of romance and cheesy romcom plots.  
Just figured that the actual meeting with his soulmate would be nothing like it.  
It happened when Barry was investigating several cases of missing children all on his own over in Coast City. He had lain in waiting for close to an hour when someone finally showed up but it hadn't at all been the person Barry had waited for. Instead of criminals or even another super villain, Barry looked at a man in a green and black suit. Whoever the guy was had put Barry into a literal vice made out of green light it appeared. Now a bit closer to the guy Barry found that his outfit looked a bit odd. While from afar it could be mistaken for spandex, up close it looked like nothing Barry had ever seen before, almost alien in nature. Maybe it was? Who the hell knew anymore with all these superpowered beings popping up left and right. The man looked pretty damn pissed though.  
"You like stealing kids?!?"  
Only now it occurred to Barry what conclusion the other must have come to and Barry couldn't even really fault him for that. Where their positions reversed Barry might have thought the same. He wouldn't have voiced it as loudly though. There was a tingly feeling in the back of his head that Barry attributed it to his nerves making his powers act up again.  
Barry used his still relatively new powers and vibrated out of the vice construct. Thank god, he had vibrated all the way through this time. Barry had a feeling that the alternative wouldn't have ended well for him. As soon as he was on the ground again, he whipped out his CCPD badge and held it up so the green guy could definitely see it. The other man moved his fist up a bit as if getting ready to attack.  
"No...wait...I'm Barry Allen, police scientist for the Central City Police Department."  
The other just froze, fist still in the air, ready to punch him, ring glowing like a beacon.  
"Seriously?! You couldn't have chosen a shorter first sentence?"  
The green man put his arm down and shoved it right under Barry's nose before the white material over his arm disappeared and showed an almost embarrassingly long sentence scrawled in Barry's own chicken scratch over the entire lower arm up to his elbow.  
For a few moments, Barry just stared at it; blinked a few times; nothing changed; screwed his eyes shut for close to 10 seconds; the sentence was still there.  
The green man was his soulmate...and Barry didn't even know _his name_!  
"Uhm..."  
Yup, really smart answer, Barry. He's definitely going to want you now. After he already thought you were a kidnapper. This relationship was off to a great start already.  
The other had already pulled his arm back and covered it up again while Barry's brain still refused to come up with anything useful. His powers were really helpful right now. Wow!  
"So Barry. You're pretty far from home."  
"I'm only here to catch the guy that's coming after the children. Just like you."  
His brain seemed to have gotten over the shock of meeting his soulmate here of all places.  
"What's even your name? I can't keep calling you 'the green guy'."  
"Green Lantern."  
"Really...by choice?"  
The words had slipped out before Barry's mind even fully formed them and 'Green Lantern' looked less than impressed about that.  
"Don't you have a normal name? Like Hank, Hank is a normal name. Unless you're not human?"  
Why was Barry rambling now? He had to fight his first instinct to just run to the other side of the planet.  
"I'm very much human...and Hank is a horrible name! It's Hal. Hal Jordan."  
Hal's mask vanished to reveal brown eye and some light freckles on his cheeks and nose. He looked like the kind of cool jock that the girls in high school had fawned over and Barry had tried to stay hidden from.  
Their first team up had ended in a success, they worked well together on and outside the battle field as they quickly figured out afterwards.  
While they were indeed soulmates neither of them wanted to rush into a relationship. Hal was more away from Earth than at home and Barry still had some old issues that he had never fully gotten rid of (and maybe never would). It just hadn't been the best moment for either of them and while they got to know each other better over the years and became best friends, love and trust and fondness followed close behind.

Three years after they had settled into a full-blown relationship, Hal and Barry were chilling on the couch in their apartment in Central City, Barry lying mostly on top of Hal while Hal's right arm was curled around Barry's waist, watching a recorded episode of Game of Thrones that Hal had missed during his latest space mission.  
Barry kept nodding off during the quieter scenes and in sleep-drunken stupor pulled Hal's free hand up to look at his own handwriting on his soulmate's lower arm. Barry loved tracing the words over and over again until Hal usually pulled his arm away again, the touch on such sensitive skin becoming arousing after a while.  
"You know, I never knew what words I had to look out for because your handwriting is just so ridiculous."  
Still looking at the TV, Hal snorted.  
"It's not like you got room to argue. Yours is just as bad."  
He wriggled his arm a bit as if to emphasize the sheer absurd size of the sentence Barry had managed to produce on Hal's arm.  
Barry kissed the inside of Hal's wrist before slightly biting it in retaliation for the comment.  
"At least, you could read it."  
Then he remembered what Hal had actually said the day they had met and suddenly Barry was very glad that no one had ever been able to read Hal's handwriting. Otherwise his life would have been over before it ever began.  
Hal seemed to have realized the same thing because his head suddenly turned towards Barry and he grimaced before his look turned apologetic.  
"Dude if I had known it was you, I would have said something else. Something nice. I swear!"  
He looked at his own handwriting on Hal's arm, fingers slipping down again to follow the lines of ink as he had all these years before on his own arm as a teenager.  
"Hal, we got these when we were 12 years old. You were never going to say something else to me."  
Barry looked up into his boyfriend's face, his soulmate, and smiled softly at him.  
Now after all these years of knowing and loving Hal, Barry knew just how much their meeting was like the two of them. Hal jumping head first into danger, following his gut no matter the cost and constantly charging forward and pulling Barry into motion as well by his side. And Barry always needing to connect the dots first, calculating the best option and placing both his feet firmly on the ground, thus being the grounding force Hal desperately needed in his life.  
"I'm glad it was you, Hal."  
It had taken a lot of time and meeting a lot of people for Barry to end up here and being happy with having Hal Jordan as his soulmate but Barry figured that that was okay. It didn't happen in a single night and some days, Barry was still struggling with thoughts of what other people thought about him but that was just the way humans were. He wasn't the only one feeling this way - wanting to be 'normal', needing to belong - and at the end of the day, all that mattered was that he was happy.  
And Barry Allen was quite happy exactly where he was.

**Author's Note:**

> I have an idea for a tiny funny epilogue. So maybe I'll post that during the next few days. No promises though.


End file.
